Weird wi-fi news: A new regulatory agency in Russia has decided every device with Wi-Fi needs registration.registering a PDA or telephone would take 10 days. Then, only the owner of the device would be licensed to use it. Registering a Wi-Fi hotspot, on the other hand, would be more difficult. Anyone wishing to set up as much as a personal home-network would need to file a complete set of documents, as well as technological certifications.Sources: The Other Russia: Russian Agency Demands Registration for all Wi-Fi Devices, Wifi net news: Russia Requires Wi-Fi Registration Glenn Fleishman is as always following the wi-fi news, Slashdot: Russia to Require Registration for Wi-Fi Use with the obligatory joke written as wifi-register.su.
To me it sounds like that new regulatory agency claiming its turf. In a way that will annoy a lot of users.
2008-04-17 (#)
Wardriving results 28 March - 16 April: 2853 new networks with GPS locations noted at WiGLE. Most amazing was finding 505 new networks without moving the wardriving box one centimeter: the AMD_IBSS networks were showing up again when I had the wardriving box running overnight in the top window.
2008-03-04 (#)
Wardriving results 24 Februari - 3 March: 4377 new networks with GPS locations. The wardriving box is helping, together with having nice weather and time for long bicycle rides around Utrecht. I passed the 90000 new networks mark at WiGLE and I'm back at position 22 in the WiGLE stats.
2008-02-23 (#)
The wardriving box is finished and I have done the first test today. And scored new networks! Between 13 Februari and 23 Februari I found 184 new networks with GPS locations. Of those 108 using the laptop on bicycle, 63 in the first testrun using the wardrivebox on bicycle and 13 from testing the wardrive box at home. Yes, I can still find new networks at home without moving.
2008-02-18 (#)
I left the wardriving box running overnight to test the stability and heat generation. No problems in those areas. It was on the top floor of the house in the window facing northwest (in the direction of the student flats). A total of 43(!) access-points were seen. Yes, wireless networks are still rising in numbers.
2008-02-17 (#)
I had some time for work on the wardriving box. I fixed the powerbutton problem by switching to Linux kernel 2.6.24.2. Linux 2.6 has specific support for the geode processor which include acpi support. With 2.6 I get a good power-button event when I press it and on a shutdown with powerdown the alix system is powered down completely (power led goes out). I also worked on the case, making holes for the antenna connectors. I managed to make the right holes and modify the I/O shield without making the wrong holes or get damaged myself. My teacher in metalwork years ago would probably think I'm still bad at it but with a drill and a metal file the modifications got done, including filing the flange of the N-connector to make it fit in the case. Pictures of the results,
Results of the metalwork.
Antenna connectors in place and the I/O shield modified to allow for the big N-connector.I'm also learning about Linux 2.6: without a keyboard there is not a lot of entropy for /dev/random.
Board installed in the case.
2008-02-13 (#)
Wardriving results between 12 January and 12 February 2008: 1321 new networks with GPS location. Since the work on the wardriving box software and hardware the GPS and the antenna have been at home for testing it all.. and I did not feel like bringing the stuff along and getting another run with problems. I ordered the battery and a charger yesterday and did some more test runs, some with the external antenna connected. The big external antenna gives me 23 visible networks at home. Work that is left on the wardriving box: cabling, making holes in the case for antenna and power connections and building it all together.
2007-12-04 (#)
Tijd voor wat bewerkingen aan het Draadloos netwerk uitleg en installatie document: ad-hoc netwerken hebben een maximum snelheid van 11 Megabit/seconde wat ik opzocht naar aanleiding van een vraag in nl.comp.netwerken.draadloos.
2007-10-03 (#)
It seems Eircom broadband missed the news about WEP being dead (pdf) and WEP being really dead. From The Register: Eircom wireless security flaw revealedEircom's director of communications Paul Bradley defended the protocol, however, saying "WEP is an industry standard protocol used by telecoms providers around the world."Well Paul, just because all the stubborn kids do it, does not mean it is the right choice.
2007-08-10 (#)
Gezien in de kismet logs: Found new network "martin en margo" gevolgd door Found new network "naast martin en margo".
2007-08-04 (#)
At home, in the garden, with barbecue weather I notice an ad-hoc network in the wireless networks lists with ssid AMD_IBSS and regularly changing channel and mac address. Anybody got any idea what this is? In other wireless at home news: the neighbourhood has no unsecured wireless networks left, and WEP is a minority.
2007-04-04 (#)
In wireless security, WEP is now 'broken harder'. Cryptography researchers at the Technische Universität Darmstadt have researched new attacks and written a tool that has a probability of 50% of finding a 104-bit WEP key within 1 minute.
2007-02-22 (#)
A great sample of the 'movie plot' way in which 'terrorism' is seen and handled: a Vancouver police computer crime investigator has warned about how the wifi network in the city can be abused by terrorists at the 2010 winter olympics. Yes, three years from now. Reading the original article in the Vancouver Sun makes it an almost funny story (from this distance) but the saddening part is that this detective is serious and the newspaper seems to take his story serious. Bruce Schneier has written a good response about it Movie Plot Threat in Vancouver. One good comment:I think the Vancouver Police crime investigator watches too much "24".
2006-09-16 (#)
Vandaag hadden we een bijeenkomst van de HCC PCgg netwerkgroep. Ik heb daar een presentatie gegeven met als titel Wireless security anno 2006: WEP is dood. Presentatie Wireless security anno 2006 HCC PCgg (pdf) en aantekeningen Wireless security anno 2006 zijn beschikbaar.
2006-08-07 (#)
Mijn document over draadloos netwerk uitleg en installatie bijgewerkt. WEP moet nu sterk afgeraden worden en naar aanleiding van een vraag van iemand een kort stukje over 'ad-hoc' draadloze netwerken.
2006-08-04 (#)
Using wpa_supplicant it should also be possible to log in to 802.1x secured (wireless) networks. The library network at work uses this but only documents usage with windows and macos X. I decided to give it a try and after some fiddling I had a working setup: Solis-air access under Linux.
2006-08-03 (#)
After being unable to use the network at Mirjams' parents house because WPA is the default with their experiabox, I decided to upgrade my laptop and my home wireless network to WPA. I searched for a WPA supporting network card for my laptop. Based on the talk at the last sane conference on the madwifi driver project I chose a senao card with an atheros chipset. With a bit of fiddling I got it all working and now I have a secure network again at home.
2006-07-24 (#)
Paul McNamara writes in an article Could that be the wireless police knocking? about a condominium/hotel developer in Tucson, Arizona, US including in the regulations for owning a condo that wireless networks have to be secured. I'm not sure I see why the developer would get involved in this subject unless they also happen to be the ISP (in which case I would consider 'no choice in ISP' a big downside to the whole deal). Wireless security needs to be addressed. In the right place: informing the public about it. Having security by default (like in siemens gigaset access points) and not hiding behind a load of unexplained acronyms in a page of the manual (seen in a recent linksys manual). I really don't think a homeowners association is the place. Although it does fit the profile of the 'homeowners associations sticking their nose into everything' which seem on the rise in the US. They make the homeowners association of the flat I lived in before look very sane (even when they did do dumb things on account of 'saving property value').
2006-04-27 (#)
Wardriving results for 25 - 26 April: 294 new networks with GPS. Most of those from a tour through Lombok, an older part of Utrecht. Lombok has its own Internet provider which started in 2003 with wireless Internet (site in Dutch), which is now moving towards connecting homes via fiber (site in Dutch). I can imagine they have interference problems in their wireless network with hundreds of access-points.
2006-03-07 (#)
Na een vraag van Pascal Middelhoff heb ik besloten het document over Installatie en gebruik draadloos netwerk voor thuis beschikbaar te stellen onder een Creative Commons licentie.
Older news items for tag wifi ⇒